Broken Windows (Real Ones) Surge in Public Housing

The broken window has long had a particular hold on the New York City psyche; at turns an emblem of disrepair and an inspiration for the policing strategy that has helped guide the New York Police Department for more than 20 years.

Now, according to a report from the New York City comptroller’s office, windows across the city’s public housing complexes have fallen into a degree of disrepair that seems drawn from generations past.

From 2005 to 2011, after a period of modest gains, the number of broken or missing windows in New York City Housing Authority buildings increased 945 percent, the report said. In 2011, the last year for which data was available, housing authority facilities were three times as likely to have broken or missing windows, compared to the city’s overall housing stock.

In an interview, Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said that while the punched-out windows of the 1970s and 1980s “gave a sense of abandonment,” often signaling an empty home, many residents today have few other options.

Heating system breakdowns in public housing increased by more than 72 percent from 2008 to 2011, according to the analysis, compared with a 20 percent increase for rent-stabilized tenants and 11 percent for market-rate tenants.

Thirty-two percent of public housing residents reported leaks in 2011, compared with 29 percent in rent-stabilized buildings and 16 percent in market-rate homes.

And that universal urban intruder, the common rodent, spared no housing type. Almost a quarter of city households reported seeing evidence of rodents in 2011 during the previous three months, according to the report, including 37 percent of public housing units. Owner-occupied homes were the least infested, with less than 11 percent reporting the presence of mice or rats.

In a statement, the housing authority said that the de Blasio administration “has provided more support for Nycha” — as the agency is known — “than any other in decades,” noting that the report drew from years-old data.

The report draws on data from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the United States Census Bureau’s Housing and Vacancy Survey from 2002 to 2011.

The report noted that overall conditions in the city’s housing stock were at their highest levels since the Housing and Vacancy Survey began tracking them in 1965.

As of 2011, 99.8 percent of all housing types were found to be in “structurally decent condition,” the comptroller’s office said, even as public housing residents increasingly raised concerns.

In 2002, 60 percent of public housing apartments had at least one deficiency, according to the report. By 2011, the figure had jumped to 79 percent.

The report called the poor conditions in public housing, relative to other types, “ironic considering the original mission of the New York City Housing Authority,” created in 1934 to provide affordable housing for low- and moderate-income people. “The way we are responding is not in the tradition of this city,” Mr. Stringer said, citing sweeping housing initiatives under Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Mayor Edward I. Koch.

Among the review’s other findings was one that Staten Island has the city’s highest-quality housing stock for rent-regulated and market-rate homes. The Bronx has the worst, the report said.

More than one-third of African-Americans in rent-regulated homes reported at least three “serious maintenance deficiencies,” according to the analysis, making them the most likely to live in poorly maintained buildings. Twenty-eight percent of Hispanic households and 16 percent of white households in rent-regulated units reported at least three deficiencies.

And a building’s height can be an indicator of its condition, the comptroller’s office said. In most housing types, a taller building suggests relatively few problems. But in public housing, the reverse has proved true: The highest percentage of deficient units (40.5 percent) was found in buildings over 20 stories.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Broken Windows (Real Ones) Surge in Public Housing. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe